Justin's Photography How-to

Photography is a method of capturing on a two-dimensional sheet a snapshot in time of a three-dimensional world. I make no claims to be an expert photographer, but I enjoy taking pictures, so long as I can take my time composing the shot.

The gallery itself is located here.

My first camera was a Christmas present in the early 1980s. It used 110 cassette film, had no settings, and produced grainy pictures that were printed disappointingly small. When I left home I purchased a cheap 35mm film camera. It was red, had no batteries, and was called a "tomato". Results depended on the available light, but were generally good outdoors until it started leaking light. Things changed in 1992 when the girl whom I later married told me she had a camera that was "too difficult to use". My best-man claimed in his speech that I married her in exchange for the camera.

We purchased a Canon SureShot when our first child was born: children and other action don't wait for you to fiddle with focus and exposure. This auto point-and-shoot is great for photos that don't require setting up.

Considerations have been made for the purchase of a digital camera. Despite dropping prices and daily increasing specifications, the relative cost of the unit, the short battery life and the inability to expand images to poster size all tip the decision in favour of 35mm film.

Praktica, M42 lenses and components

This is the equipment that my wife gave me in return for a lifetime of her company. I think I won on both counts, but she would say the same too.

My first "real purchase", made some time between 1992 and 1994, was a set of lenses that happened to be available in the local camera shop. I have often wondered if it was a good bargain, but I am slowly coming to realise that it probably was. £50 got me the following:

The camera saw very little use until about 1998. The Canon SureShot was purchased when our first child was a day old, because I realised that we would never get photos of children unless we had an automatic-everything camera. We rolled off film at the rate of one a month. My interest in artistic photography took off, as I also wanted to take pictures of subjects that didn't wriggle. And in 1999 I started to look for other equipment, including a wide-angle lens for photographing interiors of buildings:

There are also a number of other bits and pieces, including tripods, camera bags, flash synch cables and the like.

Thoughts on interchangeable lenses

The more one takes photographs with an interchangeable-lens SLR, the more one appreciates the lenses. To my untrained eye, the two zooms were great: focal length ranging from 35mm to 210mm, macro on both, f22 on the Miranda for good depth-of-field, and the extension tubes for greater distance. Several revolutionary ideas changed my opinion:

  1. The whole camera can be moved to make the subject to fill the frame.
  2. It is more interesting to restrict  the depth-of-field than to get everything in focus.
  3. Big lenses are not impressive, and no fun to carry about (so now I carry lots of smaller lenses - D'oh!).
  4. Plants and buildings do not normally move or wriggle during lens changes.

Without zoom, the photographer is forced to consider the camera location (and thus the composition) more carefully. Prime lenses are usually faster (none of my zooms do f2.8). My favourite lenses are the 24mm Pentacon and the 50mm Jena, because both are small and light, and produce excellent results.

What next?

Very wide angle lenses are available, either from Russia or the USA. But tend to be significantly more expensive (£150 for a well-corrected 19mm) than standard angle lenses. I saw a Russian fish-eye at about the same price, but could not afford it at the time. I am intrigued to experience how a tilt-shift lens works (it can be used to correct parallax when photographing buildings), but I have no justification to purchase such an item. A second M42 camera-body might also be useful, and the Praktica MTL3 would be ideal: similar to the Super 1000 but with a flash socket and a self timer.

Having ruled out digital cameras for the time being on the basis of cost, I am considering an automatic SLR. Auto-focus and motor-wind are the main features I'm looking for. There is little to choose between the makes (Canon, Minolta, Pentax, Nikon). With an adapter plate, the M42 lenses can still be used. £250 would buy some rather good M42 lenses, but would only provide a basic auto SLR with an average lens.

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